So Many Questions

Something about the rain.

I think more, I feel more 

I get lost inside, hours pass by.

Something about the wind too.

I'll wrap my arms around myself 

to lessen the eerie chill of solitude.

Meanwhile, that wishful silhouette

appears more as night thickens.

So days and nights become one

and then, right on time, the other

over and over, and we expect this

we know it's coming by the hands'

hourly movements. We anticipate

its beginning and its end, and there

is comfort in such predictions.

But how then can there be comfort 

with the absence of tell-tale signs

or precursors that notify us? 

And what if it never comes 

and we spend eternity waiting 

for an inclining of its fabrication, 

materialization; an incarnate being 

who wonders so much of the same?

I Hate It

The phone, never really out of my sight

and the temptation arrives often;

as often as I check e-mail or wash my hands.

I hate that I thought it would happen

that in some esoteric way we'd come together

or he'd suddenly be at the door with 

two plane tickets to paradise.

I guess I also hate the week after 

"my friend" comes to town.

I'm emotional, nostalgic, exacerbated

by oldies love songs on Sunny 107.1,

unwittingly diving into the deep end again.

But I'm lucky, I can snap myself out of it now

by saying, Stop it, Heather. It's never going to happen.

I'm grateful I've become more persuasive

but even now, I know, a small piece has not let go.

 

On The Moon

Well no, not literally

but conversationally, yes,

and it's the rave when fullest

speculative theories flying

on its affective properties

as unusual behaviors 

and off-beat happenings 

simmer throughout the phase.

I can even be seen stopping 

in my tracks as I'm taking 

out the evening trash,

stunned by its halo, smiling

to myself like I would to a baby

likely to trip over my infatuation 

unable to take my eyes away

from its glowing fullness

its mystical pull on my soul,

as if it speaks to it directly

and my soul speaks back.

It's captivating, and luckily 

reoccurring once exhausting

other monthly phases and shapes

back to smile warmly on us again.

How to Find Your New Home

I'm looking for a window
a door
maybe it's a bridge
to carry me over
the past fifteen years.
Memories
and milestones
drifting, reflecting.
I keep on, further
until there's this tunnel
a hidden passageway.
Exiting the other side
it's eerie yet familiar.
Its air is cool, thick
like hands submerged
in damp soil at night.
It's comforting, safe
and I want to linger here
sit a while
rest my eyes
see into tomorrow
and the day after that.
See it on the 25th day
then the 75th day
until it's the 365th
and what I see
is our new home.

The Reachers

I wonder what it's like
to be settled
content, fixed in a
surrounding
so much that it feels
stationary
with no upward mobility
just more and more
and more acceptance
of the comfortable
commonplace.
When do you decide
this is it
I'm done reaching
done rising
taking a back seat
while the others
do, expand
grow towards the sky
limbs becoming
lanky and awkward
and maybe so
but how many
remain seated
perplexed by the
sacrifice
while the reachers
those marvels
against the mundane
they know how high
the sky can go.

How He Does It

The smiling stills taken with the kids
irritate me as he does what he does
and confoundingly so. How does he
take a loving, smiling family and
denigrate it with infidelity, satisfy
casual desires at his any whim
so cavalier, so comfortable with deceit.
She is always smiling, holding his
hand, or there's his loving arm
over her shoulder pose.
He's good at pretending
whether to one or the other
and the fluency of his lies
is tradecraft like
weaponry to a terrorist.
The children smile
happily standing alongside
their model loving parents
the same parents who are estranged
in ways they will never know
but I know. I was there,
I had run into him at the pharmacy
years after, and his method still the same.
Lewd photos and vile suggestions
trying to reel me in, once again,
snake his way under my skin
coil himself around my longing
to be loved, intimately so,
after I told him years ago it was over
that I knew I would never be her
in those smiling photos, and he agreed.

Tears for the World

It was more than two weeks later
and they were asking me, "How did you feel?"
When I was crying into the last of my tissues
did anyone ask then, when it mattered
when I gave a shit?
Never an utterance until fifteen minutes
before we would all meet to rehash it,
ask if we'd do anything different.
When he asked me in that dismissive
unqualified tone, on the day in question,
if he should bring everyone in
one by one to ask what they heard

I saw I was speaking to an empty shell
a person who would never see himself
as the outline of a man he is, and yet the
heartless, soulless, faceless, wins every time.
The ignorant run free, make mistakes
and never take the blame, expose themselves
to humility, but want to squeeze it out of me
like I'm a ketchup bottle they've turned
upside down, when I am already bleeding out
dripping onto the floor, and of course
they're colorblind.

How can he see me when he has no idea
what he's looking at?
It speaks up, so it must be an enemy.
It lashes out at injustice
the very injustice he and those alike
perpetrate. I cried at my desk because
I know this is the world I'm living in.